September Monthly Retro: What Changed, What Matters, and What Admins Should Do Next

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Joshua Birk, Senior Director of Admin Evangelism, and Kate Lessard, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about what caught our attention at Dreamforce, what surprised us, and what's worth spending time on. You should subscribe (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/b...) for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Joshua Birk and Kate Lessard. Build fast and accurately with Builder Central Probably the most exciting announcement from the keynote is Builder Central. It's a low and no-code workspace to enable admins to build fast and accurately, without compromising on security. From React sites to flows to agents, you can get an idea off the ground with plain language prompts. But just because you move fast doesn't mean you need to break things, thanks to automated testing, safety checks, and built-in controls. "We can take what we as admins already know about data models and our org structure and really, truly define what we're building," Kate says. You can upload requirements documents and information about your organization's business processes to make sure everything that you build works from the get-go. Create consistently amazing Salesforce experiences The other thing that was touched on in the keynote was Headless 360 and the Headless Experience Layer. You can bring Salesforce to Slack, Claude, and anywhere else your users need to interact with your data. If you're feeling overwhelmed by how many different ways there are for users to interact with your Salesforce data, know that you're not alone. But at the end of the day, these are experiences that you're designing for your users to make their lives easier where they're already working. Admins need to focus on governance and security Finally, the biggest takeaway from Dreamforce this year is that governance and trust are more important than ever. Hackers use AI too, and the threat landscape is constantly evolving. Now more than ever, the role of the Salesforce Admin has shifted into governance. That means data cleanup and strict permissions controls to make sure that your agents are working as intended. And that also means getting a better handle on how your data is moving across platforms and who might have access to it. Trust is a core principle at Salesforce, and so we're rolling out new tools like Security Center Essentials and the Transaction Security Policy Accelerator to help you take control of what's going on in your org. There's so much more great stuff in our September Monthly Retro recap of Dreamforce, so make sure to listen to the full episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us in your feed every Thursday. Podcast swag • Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store (https://trailheadstoreamer.com/catego...) Learn more • Salesforce Admins Blog Post: Dreamforce 2026 Product Highlights for Admins (https://admin.salesforce.com/blog/202...) • Salesforce 360 Blog Post: Introducing Builder Central: The No Code AI Workspace for Salesforce (https://www.salesforce.com/blog/build...) • Salesforce Platform Guide: Your Guide to the Headless Toolkit: Bring Salesforce Anywhere Humans and Agents Work (https://www.salesforce.com/headless/t...) • Salesforce 360 Blog Post: Deploy Best-Practice Security Policies Instantly with Transaction Security Policy Accelerator (https://www.salesforce.com/blog/intro...) Admin Trailblazers Group • Admin Trailblazers Community Group (https://sforce.co/4977GHH) Social • Josh on LinkedIn (  / joshuabirk  ) • Kate on LinkedIn (  / salesforcekate  ) • Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn (  / salesforce-admins  ) • Salesforce Admins on X (https://x.com/SalesforceAdmns) • Mike on Bluesky social (https://bsky.app/profile/mikegerholdt...) • Mike on Threads (https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/) • Mike on X (https://x.com/MikeGerholdt) Full show transcript Mike Gerholdt: Before we jump into today's conversation, I want to give you a quick heads up about what's coming on the Salesforce Admins Podcast. Starting in October, we're moving to two episodes a month with a little bonus episode to kick things off. So October 1st, we're talking about how do I decide if...